Statement as to rights to inventions made under Federally sponsored research and development: Not Application
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a cartridge dust collector, and more particularly, to an improved cartridge dust collector with locking mechanism that seals the cartridges in a row in place for use and with cartridge interlocking head plates for facilitating installation and removal of the cartridges from the cartridge dust collector.
2. Brief Description of Prior Art
Dust collector assemblies have been used to remove pollutants from an air stream in various industrial and commercial applications. Commonly, the dust collector uses cartridges or other media configurations to filter the air stream. When a cartridge is filled with pollutants it is removed from the dust collector and replaced with a new cartridge. Cartridges are generally installed and removed from the dust collector assembly one at a time. The cartridges are generally aligned in rows within the housing. As such it is often difficult to reach the inner most cartridges. This is a relatively slow and laborious process. Further, existing dust collectors fail to properly seal the top of each cartridge within the housing to insure that all air passing through the housing passes through the cartridges for maximizing the filtration of the air and removal of the pollutants and contaminants from the air stream.
As will be seen from the subsequent description, the preferred embodiments of the present invention overcomes these and other shortcomings of prior art.
The present invention is an apparatus that is a cartridge dust collector comprising a housing, said housing having an air inlet and an air outlet, a chamber, said chamber having access openings, and is defined in part by a transverse plate or wall with said openings therein. Dust collector cartridges are positioned in the chamber in a vertical position in alignment with the access openings in the transverse wall. The cartridges are conical shaped, tapering from top to bottom. Said housing further comprising a pair of parallel slide rails that are in alignment with the access openings. Said cartridges further comprise a head plate and a bottom plate. The head plate of each dust collector cartridge is carried on the slide rails, which are spaced apart sufficiently to receive the cartridge therebetween. Said cartridge dust collector further comprising a sealing gasket, and cammed locking means for securing the cartridges in position in alignment with the openings in the transverse wall. The locking means are releaseable to permit removal of the cartridges from the housing for replacement. Further, the head plates for the dust collector cartridges are provided with interlocking means enabling the cartridges to be removed a row at a time.